Country singer-songwriter Slim Whitman, known for his smooth falsetto and high-pitched yodeling
talent, died yesterday in Florida, his son-in-law said.

He was 90.

The musician, who was born Ottis Dewey Whitman Jr., died of heart failure, said Roy Beagle, who
is married to Whitman’s daughter, Sharon.

“We had a 90th-birthday party for him in January, and he looked good,” Beagle said, “but he had
been in failing health since then.”

Whitman — who was self-taught on the guitar and had a string of hits, including
Rose Marie,
Indian Love Call and
Secret Love — recorded dozens of albums and sold millions of records during his career,
which he began in the late 1940s.

Whitman was working in a Florida shipyard when he was discovered by Col. Tom Parker, the future
manager of Elvis Presley.Whitman signed his first recording contract with RCA Records in 1948.

The singer toured with Presley in the 1950s.

In the early ’50s, Whitman released
Love Song of the Waterfall — which more than two decades later made the soundtrack of the
film
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was followed by
Indian Love Call, his first million-seller. A few years later, in 1955, he joined the
Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn.

His other hits include
Danny Boy,
Red River Valley and
Have I Told You Lately That I Love You.

Whitman became more popular in Europe than in the United States — particularly in Britain, where
he often toured.

“I have sold 120 million records,” he said in an interview last year. “Half of those could be in
Europe.”